November 20, 2020

 Hear Ye, Hear Ye

• Flexibility is the theme of this week.  Thank you all for all the ways that we work as a team to keep our students safe and learning!
• Every day, a group of 5K students plays "Beans on Toast" that they learned in Numeracy with Sue while waiting for their ride.  It is so dang cute! (One of those little ones could be the next numeracy teacher!)
• At 5th grade recess this week, I watched a few interactions where students had a conflict about rules of a game, but they solved the problem quickly, with very little frustration and NO adult mediation. 

 

What's Happening at Dodgeland?

• Monday - Tuesday, November 23-24
• Teacher Work Days
• Jenny will be at school - Click HERE for her calendar if you need to meet with her, in-person or virtually
• Newsletters articles due to Jenny this month.  (EC/4K and 5th have signed up)

• Wednesday - Friday, November 25-27
• No School, Happy Thanksgiving

• Monday, November 30
• Welcome Back!
• Seals on Wheels begins

• Tuesday, December 1
• Seals on Wheels continues until all students are finished

• Wednesday, December 2
• Workout Wednesday
• Optional Reading A-Z training (see below) at 3pm online
• Parents' Night for Prodigy @ 7pm online

• Thursday, December 3
• Friday, December 4

Nitty-Gritty

• Seals on Wheels
• The dental hygienist will be taking over the room next to mine starting Monday, November 30.  She will come to classrooms to pick up students for the treatments throughout the day.  She is scheduled to be here for 3 days, or until all students EC-12 whose parents signed them up have been seen.  Most of the time, she will bring 2-3 students at once to be efficient with time.  Click HERE for a list of students who are currently signed up.

• Monthly Newsletter
• This year the newsletters have gone out digitally using a newsletter creation site called Smore.  Please send any articles, announcements, pictures, etc. that you would like to be in the December newsletter to Jenny before November 24.  Grades EC/4K and 5th gr originally signed up for this month's newsletter.

• BrainPop Update
• For your planning purposes, BrainPop is unavailable right now.  As soon as it is up and running again, you will be notified.

• Prodigy Updates
• Parents' Night - All elementary parents/guardians are invited to learn about prodigy with an online live webinar.  Click HERE for the flyer.  Please share with your parents in case they are interested.  It is from 7-8pm.
• Prodigy Tournament - For your information, Dodgeland will be sponsoring a Prodigy Tournament that will run from December 7th through January 4th.  Stay tuned for details.

• Email Issue
• Many of you may be aware that last week we had a big email issue happening amongst students from all levels at school.  It started with an email that was sent to all students at Dodgeland.  (This is no longer an option for students.  Thank you Josh!). However, it escalated from there with students hitting reply all and students of various grades using inappropriate language, yelling at one another, etc.  I'd like us to use this as a learning opportunity.  Common sense media has a lesson that helps teach about email etiquette.  Learning to email appropriately is an important skill.  Please help our students to learn about reply vs reply all and how emails should be written before they are sent out to avoid issues.  If you have any questions, please let me know.

• Reading A-Z Professional Development opportunity
• On December 2, at 3pm, there will be a virtual pd training on using reading A-Z to its fullest potential.  For some, this resource may be new, but even if you have used it for years, please join us for a 45 min. live webinar.  The link will be sent out when it is closer to the day of the webinar.

PD Spotlight

For this week's PD spotlight, I am highlighting this blog post about getting back on track after a week off of school.  For some of our classrooms, the break from in-person has been longer than others, but to maximize our instructional minutes, getting our kids back into a rhythm quickly is important.  Planning for this review is just as important as what you will be teaching in literacy or math.  The other part of this plan is to reflect on what is working and what is not working with your procedures.  Are there any tweaks that need to be made?  Now's the time to think about this and plan for any new routines that are needed.

Friday Funny

Sometimes I watch a commercial that makes me laugh so hard that I just have to share it with others.  Have you seen this one?  It just cracks me up!